and a girl climbed in after him. It was pretty cramped in the backseat with all four of us—especially since Carson is so tall. He scooted under me, and I sort of wedged myself sideways on his lap.
The girl with Reid was named Sara and was one of Derrick’s sisters who had just gotten home from her freshman year of college. When Reid saw me there he looked a little sheepish and said, Hey. He introduced me to Sara and then he just laughed and said, Well . . . this is really freaking weird. But it wasn’t a mean laugh or an asshole laugh, it was more like a moment that we were sharing. It wasn’t a laugh that was meant to keep me out. It was a laugh that let me in.
Kelly handed out capsules of molly to each of us, and I took mine from her and just shrugged at Reid. I said, Who doesn’t want to feel this good? My sister, that’s who. Then I smiled, popped the capsule into my mouth, and swallowed. Reid smiled back at me as Kelly announced that she had two hits for each of us and that this stuff was the purest that Kyle had ever seen. We all slipped her some cash for the party favors. She said that we could wait to do the second hits until we were in the party, but Jess said she wanted to do hers now.
I got a little nervous, but everybody agreed. Jess said she wanted to snort hers and Reid and Carson said they did too. Kelly and Sara didn’t want to taste it in the back of their mouths all night, so they just swallowed theirs, but I let Carson dump out my second capsule. The powder was tiny, light brown crystals. He crunched it up on a little case that Kelly had in her purse. It was the size of a large makeup compact, but instead of a mirror inside, it folded out into a little metal tray. Carson used his ATM card to crunch up the crystals a little smaller and then tapped the powder into a line. There was a little straw in the case and he held it toward me. I put one end of the straw into my nose and sniffed up the line of powder, just like he had.
YEOWCH. It totally burns to snort powder into your nose. And then the taste that flooded down the back of my throat and into my mouth? It was terrible. It was like I was chewing on a latex glove. But damn, by the time we got to the door of the old locker rooms, I was already dancing. Carson was walking behind me, his hand on my hips, his fingers hooked in my belt loops. He was laughing and directing me through the old tile rooms toward the door that led out to the pool. We heard a big cheer as we stepped out onto the concrete pool deck, and saw that Whip5mart had just stepped behind the big deck of equipment between two diving boards. The blue slope of concrete was covered with a mass of bodies, and I couldn’t wait to get down into it. The music had hit my feet and it was a totally physical experience. All I wanted to do was dance.
The molly washed over me in waves unlike anything I’d ever felt before. Carson and I were silent as we danced, and I could almost feel the beats hitting my skin like raindrops. Reid and Sara danced behind Carson, and Jess and Kelly were to our right. The six of us could barely talk to each other. Every once in a while, Carson would pull me in and kiss me. He and Reid had peeled off their shirts a long time ago—was it hours? I didn’t know how long we’d been dancing. His hair was wet with sweat and seemed to be glowing purple under the lights. I knew it was just the drug playing tricks on my eyes, but it was a beautiful trick.
As Whip5mart shifted into a quieter, down-tempo track, Carson threw his head back and whooped. Reid laughed and told Jess and Kelly that this molly was the SHIT. Sara said she needed some gum ’cause she was gurning really badly. Kelly handed her a couple sticks out of her hip pocket and I realized Sara was talking about the tension in her jaw. I felt it